


𝒃𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅

by spaceodditybarnes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:13:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29139099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceodditybarnes/pseuds/spaceodditybarnes
Summary: 𝒔𝒖𝒎𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒚 bucky barnes is not a man who dies without a fight. until one day, he does. or does he?
Relationships: Bucky Barnes / reader
Kudos: 8





	𝒃𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅

**Author's Note:**

> 𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 mentions death, injury, explicit language, fluff, angst.

This was never meant to happen. The mission was never supposed to go this badly. It was never supposed to mean that your worst fear would come true. If you could have it your way, the mission would be a walk in the park. It should have been easy and ended with Bucky pulling you apart, again and again, as you chanted his name in desperation for more. **  
**

Instead, it ended with you stumbling around a Hydra base. Blood dribbling from your nose, knee bruised and throbbing and a headache to rival the headache you give the team. The mission ended with you desperately calling out for Bucky, or just anyone who could tell you the location of your brown-eyed lover boy.

Steve finds you first, panic in his eyes as he tells you that Bucky has been taken to hospital and that he’s going to take you to see him. It’s Steve who reassures you, trying to ease frayed nerves but all you can think of is your Bucky; alone in a hospital bed, scared of the doctors and nurses milling around him.

It’s also Steve who patches you up too. It’s Clint piloting the Quinjet, it’s Natasha holding your hand, it’s Sam who is deathly silent because he just doesn’t know what to say. But it’s also Sam who understands. He was trained to understand, for God’s sake. A former soldier, working at the VA until Steve found him. Yet somehow, Sam finds comforting you impossible.

It’s because you were never a soldier, he thinks, not really. You had never been subjected to the terror of Afghanistan, Iraq. You had never seen death in the way Sam, or even Steve, had seen it. But you had seen death. You had been witness to the way your family and best friend had suffered. Sam had seen his best friend, his wingman, get shot down in front of him so he could understand. He just didn’t know how to comfort you. 

You had never loved before Bucky. Never known happiness quite like the happiness that came with being Bucky. The thought of losing him was too much to bear, it’s partly why nobody could stop you from storming the hospital corridors; refusing medical treatment and insisting that there was no pain. Because there wasn’t, not really, the only pain was the heartache that came with loving someone who threw themselves into danger for a living.

It was all the love for Bucky that you had rooted deep inside of you that made the heartache of loving Bucky easy. It was the morning kisses, the late-night talks. The way Bucky would bathe you when you were feverish and needing to be cleansed. The way Bucky admired you in the morning glow of the sun. It was all of this and more that made loving Bucky easy.

And yet it was all of this that made this moment agonizingly painful. Entering an empty hospital room when Bucky should have been there. It was Steve who gained the attention of a nurse, it was Steve who found out first. Nobody wanted to tell you, not in the hospital anyway. They would have told you, they definitely would have, but a hospital was not the right place to do it; the hospital was not the right place for you to explode with red-hot anger and heartbreak.

You’re not sure what was worst at this moment, the red-hot anger or the bitter taste of heartbreak. You knew that ‘patient expired’ was possibly the medical term, yet it didn’t stop you from feeling furious that they didn’t want to put his death in a more humanizing term. Bucky was a human, he wasn’t food: he doesn’t expire, he dies. But your Bucky doesn’t die without a fight.

It was the scream that tore through you, pouring out in waves of anger, exhaustion, heartbreak, which had alerted a doctor to your presence. It was the doctor that bore the brunt of your emotions. Instead of remaining calm to prevent freaking the doctor out and having security guards escort you from the building, you threw Bucky’s medical file against the wall in a fit of rage. “Ma’am, I suggest that you calm down. Or I will have security escort you from the building.” Doctor what’s-his-face (he did have a name badge, but you refused to humanize him. They couldn’t humanize Bucky so you were adamant on giving them the same treatment) tried to calm you down, but to no avail.

“Don’t fucking tell me to calm down” you seethed, hands clenched into fists. You were positive that the doctor was unaware of your importance since he couldn’t be bothered to ask for your name or relation to the deceased, but that was the absolute least of your concerns at this given moment. “You have no idea how I’m feeling right now. My whole entire body just hurts but there is nothing that compares to the absolute pain of losing the love of my life. You have no idea of the debilitating heartbreak of knowing I’m never going to see his sweet face ever again!”

It was just then that the doctor figured out who you were. Having worked on Bucky, trying to bring him back, he felt guilty that he failed to bring him back. “I’m sorry-” he tried, but it was the yell of frustration from you that stopped him. Doctor Keeble, you read his name badge at long-last, knew this tirade from you was not over. It was the frustrated yell that had brought Steve, Sam, Clint, Thor, Natasha, and Tony to the room. Following behind them was a worn-out Bucky, who slipped in unannounced to surprise you.

“The fucking pain of losing him is unbearable. It’s like a million volts of electricity being pumped through my body again and again. It’s like someone’s just taken a blunt, rusting dagger and torn my heart into pieces. Just imagine my anger after seeing that the patient has expired written in his medical file. Patient fuckin’ expired as if he’s food” you shouted, tears creating streaks on your dirty face. Steve, who knew this wasn’t going to end well, approached you and tried to coax you away; mumbling how it was okay to hurt, but this wasn’t right.

Clint, who had just had his shoulder popped into place and was high on pain meds, let out a wheeze at your statement. Tony and Sam looked on in shock, but they had supposed it was the shock of the situation and Clint was handling it how he generally handles things: laughter. “If Bucky was food, he’d be bread…” Tony suggested.

“Nope, Marmite. You either love him or hate him.” Sam quipped back, earning a snort from Tony and tears of laughter from Clint. All three men had to lean on each other for support, the laughter making it hard for them to stand.

“Bread expires. Milk expires. Cheese expires. Chicken fuckin expires. You know what doesn’t expire?” You asked, sensing Natasha move forward to place a hand on your shoulder. “Bucky doesn’t expire. Humans, as a rule, generally don’t fuckin expire. Humans pass away. Humans kick the bucket. Humans take the forever sleep-” Steve cut you off, trying to prevent you from taking this any further.

“You could also say that Bucky is permanently peaced the fuck out” Tony suggested, earning a snort from Clint and an evil stare from you. “Oh, maybe not the time. Sorry” Tony mumbled, almost fading into the background in a desperate attempt to stop laughing before it’s him in a body bag. Normally you would find Tony’s remarks funny, but you could barely hold yourself together and being happy was the furthest thing from your mind right now.

“God, I don’t even know what I’m feeling right now. I’m angry because you’ve dehumanized one of the best men to walk this planet. Sure, Steve may have single-handedly defeated Hydra and won the war for you goons so that you could have all this freedom and he’s my best friend so he has the utmost respect from me. My God, you have no idea just how fuckin’ great my Bucky is. He’s the longest-serving prisoner of war in history. He’s trying so hard to write all the wrongs that he unknowingly committed and you’ve said he’s fuckin expired as if he’s food. You don’t know him like I do. You would know that he wouldn’t go without a damn good fight” you cried.

Thor stepped up this time, sensing that Steve and Natasha were struggling to calm you down, and grabbed onto your hand; letting you use him to ground yourself. Thor was positive that there wasn’t a single human in the room that couldn’t fathom the pain of losing a loved one but he knew that your pain was so raw; your pain was anger, hurt, grief. Pain that could truly tear someone apart completely; pain that could leave someone struggling to breathe with no means of finding air. “My Bucky would have fought. If you were good doctors, my Bucky would be here because you would have seen his fight and you would have helped.”

“I know it doesn’t feel that way right now, but the sun will shine on you again. Losing a loved one brings grief that is so hard to bear, but this hurt will not be this bad forever. This, however, is no place. It is okay to cry here, to hurt here, but this is not the place for anger.” Thor soothed, trying to ease your fragile mind. You knew Thor was right, and that you wouldn’t hurt forever but right now the pain was real, the pain was current and the pain wouldn’t be erased. But Thor was right, the hospital was not the place for anger. 

Thor, having managed to make you see sense, had helped the anger to dissipate until you were just sobbing but you didn’t want to leave. You couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the last place associated with Bucky Barnes; even if that place was a hospital. Whilst you seemed to have lost the energy to fight anymore, you planted your feet on the ground and used the anti-gravity function on your boots to ensure that nobody would move you. It took Steve and Thor to distract you whilst Natasha turned off the feature, allowing Steve to wrap his arm around you; supporting Thor to move you – apologizing profusely to the doctor all the while.

You couldn’t believe that you were leaving Bucky behind, leaving behind the one man who had taught you how to love. It had been Bucky to bring you back to life, show you that love is the most beautiful thing in the world. But here you were, leaving Bucky behind as if he meant absolutely nothing to you. “Darlin’, what’s happened?” Bucky’s voice rang through the corridors, his heart splintering at seeing you so upset. It was Steve who pointed Bucky out; although your brain tried to convince yourself that he wasn’t real, you went to him anyway.

Natasha, being mindful, explained the situation to Bucky who just nodded in understanding. Comforting you, although important, was not at the top of his list of priorities; rather, taking you home and looking after you. Bucky Barnes was an injured man, but he was also a super-soldier who would heal; you, however, had gone through the most traumatic experience known and it would take a while for it to heal. “Come on, sweet love, we’re going to go home.”

Back in the jet, you clung to Bucky as if he was going to disappear again, and this didn’t change when you got home. He was understanding, however, and carried you back to the room you shared and through to the bathroom; he was as gentle as ever as he bathed you, dressing you into clean clothes and tucking you into bed. “Do you want to talk about it, baby?” Bucky would understand if you had said no, and yet he wasn’t surprised when you had nodded your head.

“Hearing that you had been hurt wasn’t the greatest moment, but I could handle it. You had been hurt before so I knew what to expect. But arriving at the hospital? Finding you weren’t there? Reading ‘patient expired’ in your medical file? I couldn’t handle it, I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t know how to handle it, especially since they had said you had expired. Almost as if you weren’t a human. I just- I got angry and I was hurt and I know I was wrong to scream at the doctor but he was just there and I didn’t- couldn’t keep it in because I knew you wouldn’t go down without a fight. You wouldn’t leave without a fight.” You confessed, trying to avoid his gaze.

“I understand why you did it, darlin’, and so do the others. I’m fairly sure that the doctor will live and get over it. You had a perfectly valid response to thinking I was gone” Bucky carded a hand through your damp hair, soothing your frayed nerves. “You’re right you know, there’s no way I’d go down without a fight. I’m here to stay, nothing will change that, darlin’.”

For all the pain that came with loving Bucky, it was soft moments like these that made the pain stop existing. Bucky was human, he was a fighter; he was not _**bread**_.


End file.
